Wayne's World: March is all about sparking nature's lust for life

Frosty lawns are filling up with worm-expectant American robin parents — you know, the bird in that old favorite song of spring, "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along."

Wayne Hall

Frosty lawns are filling up with worm-expectant American robin parents — you know, the bird in that old favorite song of spring, "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along."

Which means Hallelujah!

It's baby-making time all over the place — from wriggling mosquitoes in a rain-filled coffee can to hordes of salamanders slogging through snow and ducking traffic to reach chilly woodland breeding pools.

Nothing much can stop them.

Not even rotten, foul, horrible March storms, which can be "brutal," says state Hudson River Estuary Program naturalist Tom Lake.

One dark and stormy March night as he lay in bed, Lake knew a nearby bald eagle nest with chicks was taking a pounding from fierce winds and sleet.

"March has some of the bleakest, most brutal weather of the year," says Lake, who has tracked wild things for 20 years as editor of the state Department of Environmental Conservation's free online Hudson River Almanac.

And every year, the critters say bring it on, do your worst.

"People don't realize this is in their DNA," says Lake. "Eagles have been doing this in the Hudson Valley for at least 15,000 years, and that's before people got here."

That's the kind of lust for life that last week sparked a strike-up-the-band chorus of raspy yodeling, mating-eager spring peepers beside railroad tracks in Cornwall.

And soon to arrive from the faraway Sargasso Sea north of Puerto Rico are tenacious legions of baby American eels, which follow their outstanding survival-issued GPS to drift through all kinds of danger to find Hudson River streams where they will mature. As adults, the eels go all the way back to the Sargasso to lay their eggs.

Ignoring the March weather madness outside, a 4-foot-long hibernating black rat snake woke up from its winter slumber and was lounging comfortably warm in a Cornwall living room. The early bird snake — hungry, harmless and beautiful — now waits for a warmer-weather release from a wildlife rehabber's house.

So you see, March is about the lust for life.

And taking chances. Some lucky tree swallows that buzzed Gardiner a tad too soon found the ground snowbound. But they lucked out. The next day's melt saw them happily going after flying insects.

All spring creatures live by a simple code: Never give up. Keep trying.

"It was snowing the other day and the robins were singing," says Pam Golben, director of the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum's Wildlife Education Center.

And we feel like it, too, when we connect with nature's beating heart.

Which is why Newburgh ninth-grade teacher Christine Hutchinson, who's also a poultry farmer, brought eggs and a flashlight March 19 to her classroom.

Her students aimed their flashlight beams inside the shells and saw creation unfold. They saw embryos move, veins throb and finally chicks being born.